Ambrose E. Burnside (1824–1881)

Ambrose E. Burnside was a
major general in
the Union army during the American
Civil War (1861–1865). Instantly recognizable for his bushy sideburns
(the term itself is derived from reversing his last name), Burnside was one of
four men to command the Army of
the Potomac in Virginia. Offered the job twice previously—following
George B.
McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign in 1862 and following the Second Battle of
Manassas later that summer—he turned it down, citing his own lack of
experience and encouraging his peers and, subsequently, historians to question
his self-confidence. When he did take command of the army, he led it into
disaster at the Battle of
Fredericksburg (1862), perhaps the Union's most lopsided defeat of the
war. After his corps was badly defeated at the Battle of the Crater (1864) he went home on a leave
of absence from which he was never called back to duty. Burnside's dismal
reputation is probably unfair, however. He was an innovative engineer but an
unlucky general who was often made a scapegoat for larger failures. MORE...

Map This Entry

Share It

Ambrose Everett Burnside was born May 23, 1824, near Liberty, Indiana, and
finished near the middle of his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point
in 1847. After serving garrison duty in the Mexican War (1846–1848) and two
years on the western frontier, he resigned his commission in 1853, settled in
Rhode Island, and was issued a patent for the breech-loading Burnside carbine.
The weapon, however, proved popular only after Burnside had gone bankrupt
attempting to manufacture it. While treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad,
he worked for McClellan, a friend from West Point.

Burnside began his service in the Civil
War as colonel of the 1st Rhode Island Infantry, but after the First Battle of
Manassas (1861), he was made a brigadier general. In charge of what
would later become the Army of the Potomac's Ninth Corps, he battled gale-force
winds, seasickness, and knee-deep swamps to seize and occupy Roanoke Island and
the North Carolina sounds, victories that helped to solidify the Union navy's
blockade of the Atlantic coast.

Several months later, in July 1862, Burnside's corps joined the Army of the
Potomac and, after Second Manassas, he refused command of the army for the
second time, partly out of loyalty to his old friend McClellan. At the Battle of
Antietam on September 17, Burnside's supposed delay in attacking from the left
flank infuriated McClellan. (In fact, McClellan tried to excuse his own
uncoordinated assaults by exaggerating the amount of time it took Burnside to
make his attack.) In the meantime, McClellan's refusal to pursue Confederate
commander Robert E. Lee
aggressively after the battle incensed U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, who
replaced his commander with Burnside. His attack on Fredericksburg in December
was suitably aggressive, but it was also a disastrous loss for Union forces that
involved repeated frontal assaults on heavily fortified Confederate lines. By
the end of the battle, Burnside was intensely frustrated and offered to
personally lead a final charge before being dissuaded by his subordinates. The
engagement's failure was due in part to misunderstandings with Major General
William B. Franklin, who had commanded the Union left; subversion by Franklin's
generals led to Burnside's removal early in 1863. But this came only after a
disastrous, rain-soaked retreat known as the "Mud March," during which nearby
Confederate pickets held up signs that mockingly read, "This Way to
Richmond."

As commander of the Department of the
Ohio in May 1863, Burnside attempted to impose military discipline on the
civilian population by arresting Ohio's outspoken antiwar politician, Clement L.
Vallandigham, on charges of sympathizing with the enemy. Vallandigham's
conviction by military tribunal marked a low point both in Burnside's career and
in the Lincoln administration, which supported the arrest and the attendant
suspension of habeas corpus. (Vallandigham, a Democrat, would be nominated for
Ohio governor in 1864 while in exile in North Carolina.) That summer of 1863
Burnside liberated East Tennessee from Confederate control, but after the Union
defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, Major General William Rosecrans unfairly
blamed Burnside for not coming to his aid, although he could only have done so
by abandoning East Tennessee.

Burnside returned to Virginia and led the Ninth Corps through the Overland Campaign and
into the siege of Petersburg in the spring of 1864. After the entrenched Union and
Confederate forces fought to a stalemate outside the city, Burnside encouraged
the remarkable idea of excavating a 511-foot-long mine that would end twenty to
thirty feet beneath a Confederate artillery battery at Colquitt's Salient. After
nearly a month of digging, the mine was packed with explosives and detonated,
after which the Ninth Corps assaulted the Confederate lines. Incompetent
generals in the leading division compromised the attack, however, and when Union
general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant called off the operation, Burnside's men
became trapped in the explosion's crater, serving as easy targets for what a
Confederate general later described as a "turkey shoot." Afterward, Grant issued
Burnside a leave of absence and never called him back to duty.

Although Burnside has been lampooned as a
particularly poor general, that reputation is not fully deserved. He tended to
give his subordinates too much latitude, a policy that succeeded so long as
those subordinates were experienced professionals, but the amateurs who rose to
the top through battlefield attrition required a tighter rein than he was
accustomed to administering. The worst charges against him, however, have been
filed by those who found him to be a convenient scapegoat for themselves or
their allies.

Following the war, Burnside was three times elected governor of Rhode Island and
was twice elected to the U.S. Senate. He was president of the Grand Army of the
Republic, a Union veterans association, and, in 1871, became the first president
of the National Rifle Association. He died on September 13, 1881, in Bristol,
Rhode Island.

Time Line

May 23, 1824
- Ambrose E. Burnside is born near Liberty, Indiana.

July 1, 1847
- Ambrose E. Burnside graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point near the middle of his class and is commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 2nd Artillery.

November 1, 1853
- Ambrose E. Burnside resigns his commission in the U.S. Army and organizes Bristol Rifle Works in order to manufacture his invention, the Burnside carbine.

April 16, 1861
- At the beginning of the American Civil War, Ambrose E.
Burnside is commissioned colonel of the 1st Rhode Island Volunteers.

July 21, 1861
- Ambrose E. Burnside and his 1st Rhode Island Volunteers participate in the First Battle of Manassas.

August 6, 1861
- After the First Battle of Manassas, Ambrose E. Burnside is appointed brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers.

September 17, 1862
- Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside commands the Army of Potomac's Ninth Corps at the Battle of Antietam. He is criticized by his commander, George B. McClellan, for being too slow to attack.

November 8, 1862
- Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside accepts command of the Army of the Potomac after twice declining the promotion.

December 13, 1862
- Confederate general Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia crush Union general Ambrose E. Burnside and the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Fredericksburg in one of the most lopsided defeats of the war.

January 25, 1863
- Rather than fire the Union generals who had conspired against Ambrose E. Burnside, including John Newton, President Abraham Lincoln replaces Burnside with Joseph Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac.

March 16, 1863
- Union general Ambrose E. Burnside is assigned command of the Department of the Ohio.

September 2, 1863
- Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside liberates the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, from Confederate control.

April 25, 1864
- Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside leads a reorganized and reinforced Ninth Corps from fighting in Tennessee back to the Army of the Potomac in Virginia.

July 30, 1864
- Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside leads the Ninth Corps to defeat at the Battle of the Crater outside Petersburg. After the battle, Burnside is effectively relieved of his command.

April 15, 1865
- Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, once commander of the Army of the Potomac, resigns his volunteer commission.

April 4, 1866
- Ambrose E. Burnside is elected governor of Rhode Island and serves three one-year terms.

March 5, 1875
- Ambrose E. Burnside begins his first term in the U.S. Senate representing Rhode Island.

June 8, 1880
- Ambrose E. Burnside is reelected to the U.S. Senate representing Rhode Island.